Ladies' Detective Agency 01 - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency (22 page)

“Well?” she said.
“Did everything go as planned?”

“Mma Ramotswe, I
really think …”

“Did he come round himself, or did
he send one of his men?”

“One of his men. But, listen, you
are a fixer of lives, I am just …”

“And did you tell
him that I could get the thing back? Did he seem interested?”

“I fix machines. I cannot … You see, I have never lied. I have
never lied before, even when I was a small boy. My tongue would go stiff if I
tried to lie, and I couldn’t.”

Mma Ramotswe upended the
teapot for a final time.

“You’ve done very well this time.
Lies are quite all right if you are lying for a good cause. Is it not a good
cause to find out who killed an innocent child? Are lies worse than murder, Mr
J.L.B. Matekoni? Do you think that?”

“Murder is worse. But
…”

“Well there you are. You didn’t think it
through, did you? Now you know.”

She looked at him and smiled,
and he thought: I am lucky. She is smiling at me. There is nobody to love me in
this world. Here is somebody who likes me and smiles at me. And she’s
right about murder. It’s far worse than lies.

“Come in for
tea,” said Mma Ramotswe. “Mma Makutsi has boiled the kettle and we
can drink tea while we decide what to do next.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

MR CHARLIE GOTSO,
BA

M
R CHARLIE Gotso looked at Mma Ramotswe. He respected fat women,
and indeed had married one five years previously. She had proved to be a
niggling, troublesome woman and eventually he had sent her down to live on a
farm near Lobatse, with no telephone and a road that became impassable in wet
weather. She had complained about his other women, insistently, shrilly, but
what did she expect? Did she seriously think that he, Mr Charlie Gotso, would
restrict himself to one woman, like a clerk from a Government department? When
he had all that money and influence? And a BA as well? That was the trouble
with marrying an uneducated woman who knew nothing of the circles in which he
moved. He had been to Nairobi and Lusaka. He knew what people were thinking in
places like that. An intelligent woman, a woman with a BA, would have known
better; but then, he reminded himself, this fat woman down in Lobatse had borne
him five children already and one had to acknowledge that fact. If only she
would not carp on about other women.

“You are the woman from
Matekoni?”

She did not like his voice. It was sandpaper-rough,
and he slurred the ends of the words lazily, as if he could not be bothered to
make himself clear. This came from contempt, she felt; if you were as powerful
as he was, then why bother to communicate properly with your inferiors? As long
as they understood what you wanted—that was the essential thing.

“Mr J.L.B. Matekoni asked me to help him, Rra. I am a private
detective.”

Mr Gotso stared at her, a slight smile playing on his
lips.

“I have seen this place of yours. I saw a sign when I was
driving past. A private detective agency for ladies, or something like
that.”

“Not just for ladies, Rra,” said Mma Ramotswe.
“We are lady detectives but we work for men too. Mr Patel, for example.
He consulted us.”

The smile became broader. “You think you
can tell men things?”

Mma Ramotswe answered calmly.
“Sometimes. It depends. Sometimes men are too proud to listen. We
can’t tell that sort of man anything.”

He narrowed his
eyes. The remark was ambiguous. She could have been suggesting he was proud, or
she could be talking about other men. There were others, of course …

“So anyway,” said Mr Gotso. “You know that I lost
some property from my car. Matekoni says that you might know who took it and
get it back for me?”

Mma Ramotswe inclined her head in agreement.
“I have done that,” she said. “I found out who broke into
your car. They were just boys. A couple of boys.”

Mr Gotso raised
an eyebrow. “Their names? Tell me who they are.”

“I
cannot do that,” said Mma Ramotswe.

“I want to smack them.
You will tell me who they are.”

Mma Ramotswe looked up at Mr
Gotso and met his gaze. For a moment neither said anything. Then she spoke:
“I gave them my word I would not give their names to anybody if they gave
me back what they had stolen. It was a bargain.” As she spoke, she looked
around Mr Gotso’s office. It was just behind the Mall, in an
unprepossessing side street, marked on the outside with a large blue sign,
GOTSO HOLDING ENTERPRISES
. Inside, the room was simply
furnished, and if it were not for the photographs on the wall, you would hardly
know that this was the room of a powerful man. But the photographs gave it
away: Mr Gotso with Moeshoeshoe, King of the Basotho; Mr Gotso with Hastings
Banda; Mr Gotso with Sobhuza II. This was a man whose influence extended beyond
their borders.

“You made a promise on my behalf?”

“Yes, I did. It was the only way I could get the item
back.”

Mr Gotso appeared to think for a moment; Mma Ramotswe
looked at one of the pictures more closely. Mr Gotso was giving a cheque to
some good cause and everybody was smiling; “Big cheque handed over for
charity” ran the cut-out newspaper headline below.

“Very
well,” he said. “I suppose that was all you could do. Now, where is
this item of property?”

Mma Ramotswe reached into her handbag and
took out the small leather pouch.

“This is what they gave
me.”

She put it on the table and he reached across and took it in
his hand.

“This is not mine, of course. This is something which
one of my men had. I was looking after it for him. I have no idea what it
is.”

“Muti, Rra. Medicine from a witch doctor.”

Mr Gotso’s look was steely.

“Oh yes? Some little charm
for the superstitious?”

Mma Ramotswe shook her head.

“No, I don’t think so. I think that is powerful stuff. I think
that was probably rather expensive.”

“Powerful?” His
head stayed absolutely still as he spoke, she noticed. Only the lips moved as
the unfinished words slid out.

“Yes. That is good. I would like
to be able to get something like that myself. But I do not know where I can
find it.”

Mr Gotso moved slightly now, and the eyes slid down Mma
Ramotswe’s figure.

“Maybe I could help you,
Mma.”

She thought quickly, and then gave her answer. “I
would like you to help me. Then maybe I could help you in some way.”

He had reached for a cigarette from a small box on his table and was now
lighting it. Again the head did not move.

“In what way could you
help me, Mma? Do you think I’m a lonely man?”

“You
are not lonely. I have heard that you are a man with many women friends. You
don’t need another.”

“Surely I’m the best judge
of that.”

“No, I think you are a man who likes information.
You need that to keep powerful. You need muti too, don’t you?”

He took the cigarette out of his mouth and laid it on a large glass
ashtray.

“You should be careful about saying things like
that,” he said. The words were well articulated now; he could speak
clearly when he wanted to. “People who accuse others of witchcraft can
regret it. Really regret it.”

“But I am not accusing you of
anything. I told you myself that I used it, didn’t I? No, what I was
saying was that you are a man who needs to know what’s going on in this
town. You can easily miss things if your ears are blocked with wax.”

He picked up the cigarette again and drew on it.

“You can
tell me things?”

Mma Ramotswe nodded. “I hear some very
interesting things in my business. For example, I can tell you about that man
who is trying to build a shop next to your shop in the Mall. You know him?
Would you like to hear about what he did before he came to Gaborone? He
wouldn’t like people to know that, I think.”

Mr Gotso
opened his mouth and picked a fragment of tobacco from his teeth.

“You are a very interesting woman, Mma Ramotswe. I think I understand
you very well. I will give you the name of the witch doctor if you give me this
useful information. Would that suit you?”

Mma Ramotswe clicked
her tongue in agreement. “That is very good. I shall be able to get
something from this man which will help me get even better information. And if
I hear anything else, well I shall be happy to let you know.”

“You are a very good woman,” said Mr Gotso, picking up a small
pad of paper. “I’m going to draw you a sketch-map. This man lives
out in the bush not far from Molepolole. It is difficult to find his place, but
this will show you just where to go. I warn you, by the way—he’s
not cheap. But if you say that you are a friend of Mr Charlie Gotso, then you
will find that he takes off twenty percent. Which isn’t at all bad, is
it?”

CHAPTER
TWENTY

MEDICAL MATTERS

S
HE HAD
the information now. She had a map to find a murderer, and she would find him.
But there was still the detective agency to run, and cases which needed to be
dealt with—including a case which involved a very different sort of
doctor, and a hospital.

Mma Ramotswe had no stomach for hospitals;
she disliked the smell of them; she shuddered at the sight of the patients
sitting on benches in the sun, silenced by their suffering; she was frankly
depressed by the pink day-pyjamas they gave to those who had come with TB.
Hospitals were to her a
memento
mori
in bricks and mortar; an
awful reminder of the inevitable end that was coming to all of us but which she
felt was best ignored while one got on with the business of life.

Doctors were another matter altogether, and Mma Ramotswe had always been
impressed by them. She admired, in particular, their sense of the confidential
and she took comfort in the fact that you could tell a doctor something and,
like a priest, he would carry your secret to the grave. You never found this
amongst lawyers, who were boastful people, on the whole, always prepared to
tell a story at the expense of a client, and, when one came to think of it,
some accountants were just as indiscreet in discussing who earned what. As far
as doctors were concerned, though, you might try as hard as you might to get
information out of them, but they were inevitably tight-lipped.

Which
was as it should be, thought Mma Ramotswe. I should not like anybody else to
know about my … What had she to be embarrassed about? She thought hard.
Her weight was hardly a confidential matter, and anyway, she was proud of being
a traditionally built African lady, unlike these terrible, stick-like creatures
one saw in the advertisements. Then there were her corns—well, those were
more or less on public display when she wore her sandals. Really, there was
nothing that she felt she had to hide.

Now constipation was quite a
different matter. It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about
troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from
constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably
enough of them to form a political party—with a chance of government
perhaps—but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she
imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail.

She stopped
her reverie, and turned to the business in hand. Her old friend, Dr Maketsi,
had telephoned her from the hospital and asked if he could call in at her
office on his way home that evening. She readily agreed; she and Dr Maketsi
were both from Mochudi, and although he was ten years her senior she felt
extremely close to him. So she cancelled her hair-braiding appointment in town
and stayed at her desk, catching up on some tedious paperwork until Dr
Maketsi’s familiar voice called out: Ko! Ko! and he came into the
office.

They exchanged family gossip for a while, drinking bush tea and
reflecting on how Mochudi had changed since their day. She asked after Dr
Maketsi’s aunt, a retired teacher to whom half the village still turned
for advice. She had not run out of steam, he said, and was now being pressed to
stand for Parliament, which she might yet do.